


While War Is Polishing His Drum, Peace Plays Second Fiddle

by FascinationStreet



Series: Hemisphere Of One, My Soul, Paratrooper [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, Androids still exist in WWII, Angst, First Kiss, Gen, M/M, War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 09:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15638121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FascinationStreet/pseuds/FascinationStreet
Summary: “Connor.”He comes back to himself, still staring into the glassy eyes of Graves, still tangled in his desperate grasp. Hank’s voice, grounding him as always. It’s rough, like the earth they sleep on, or like the rumble of thunder in oppressive skies above the hedgerows they hide in.“He’s gone, Connor. Come on.”Hands, in front of his face, freeing him from cooling, bloodied claws. Hands, on his, pulling them away and off the gritty basement floor. Hank’s hands, dirty and large and safe.





	While War Is Polishing His Drum, Peace Plays Second Fiddle

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my good friends, i have returned after two weeks of uhhhh absolute shit. 
> 
> If this fic had a working title it would have been Is Ken Even In A Fandom If She Doesn't Write A Historical AU? This is heavily based on Band of Brothers because I refused to fall into the research hole for 3 weeks before writing anything and i know BOB like the back of my hand. So, if you've watched it you'll be able to see everything I borrowed.
> 
> For context; androids are allowed to enlist but can only enter active combat as battlefield medics. All of the same prejudices apply, as well as fear of deviancy. This is before any kind of revolution. Also, Hank is a sergeant in this instead of a lieutenant, just bc it fit the vibe better.
> 
> I have the rest of the timeline for this verse vaguely planned out so there may be more at some point! And as always, I couldn't have done it without the comforting embrace of my good wife Rae <3

It’s not the first time he’s held a man while he dies. It’s not the fifth time, or the tenth time, or even the twentieth time. It’s the twenty seventh time he’s looked into a man’s eyes while he takes his last breath, but it’s the first time he’s ever seen the raw fear and desperation that he sees in Graves’s.

Connor physically is unable to forget a single thing that he’s seen since he landed in Holland five months ago; he’s an android. His programming isn’t supposed to allow intrusive thoughts or memories as humans would experience them, but his programming isn’t the same as it was. He’s an android, but he’s a deviant. 

He hasn’t self-tested since November, after being relieved in Belgium and returning to England. CyberLife mandates that all androids should self-test for rogue programming weekly, twice weekly when in active combat. But Connor was scared of what he’d find.

He’s no longer scared to run it after Bastogne, after the Bois Jaques and having to tourniquet bloody stumps of the limbs of the men he’s spent every waking moment with for the last five months, after living as if every moment could be their last. He knows what he’ll find. 

Connor has watched men die, he’s held them while they passed; he knows death, but he’s never experienced anything like Graves. He’s fucking terrified, the youthful fear of someone too young to even be here and the need for comfort making him heave and shake in desperation. He claws at Connor’s uniform. He chokes on his own blood and the burned flesh of his airways, begging in unintelligible moans and grunts to be saved. Connor can’t do anything for him but try to calm him down and give him a fighting chance to pull through, but the fear has sunk its teeth into him and will not relinquish its grip; he dies with his eyes bulging and hands like claws, tangled in Connor’s fatigues enough that he doesn’t think he can pull himself away.

It’s the final straw. Any chance he had of making it through the war with his programming intact is long gone, but this is the moment he knows that it’s shattered, beyond repair, just like the rest of them are. He’s terrified, no longer of becoming a deviant, but of what it means.

Androids get washed out of the army for succumbing to deviancy, the same way that humans get washed out for Low Morale Fibre, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. There aren’t any army shrinks for androids, but there are are lists of warning signs circulated among command to help them weed out any android that can’t do their job. Androids that feel cannot perform to the necessary standard in the field; how can they objectively assess the outcome for survival for a troop if they’re emotionally attached to him, how can they prioritise who to treat, who to save, who to leave behind. 

“Connor.”

He comes back to himself, still staring into the glassy eyes of Graves, still tangled in his desperate grasp. Hank’s voice, grounding him as always. It’s rough, like the earth they sleep on, or like the rumble of thunder in oppressive skies above the hedgerows they hide in.

“He’s gone, Connor. Come on.”

Hands, in front of his face, freeing him from cooling, bloodied claws. Hands, on his, pulling them away and off the gritty basement floor. Hank’s hands, dirty and large and safe. 

Hank’s hands have become a kind of home for him. The only thing that brings him any kind of comfort that he shouldn’t need but desperately does. He remembers Hank’s hands pulling him out of the rain of boots and fists venting anger and fear and frustration on his body, he remembers Hank’s hands pushing his head down out of the line of fire while they waited for a chance to move up towards the cries for a medic, he remembers Hank’s hands handing him a small square of chocolate to distract him from the crushing defeat of having to watch a kid bleed out because they were pinned down by enemy fire and he just couldn’t get to him. Connor remembers Hank’s hands, deadly wrapped around a trench knife or his rifle, sure holding his ever-present cigar or grease pencil and map, gentle guiding civilians to safety or shaken men towards the chow line.

He pulls Connor up from the floor and out of the way so that Graves’s stretcher can be carried out of the room to who knows where, someone’s blanket draped haphazardly across his face, frozen in contorted terror. 

Connor’s memory banks are supposed to store everything, every detail, every sight, every piece of data his sensors pick up, but he blinks and suddenly they’re in Hank’s quarters without any memory of how they got there.

Hank deposits him on the creaky army-issue mattress and kneels in front of him, waiting him out. Connor raises his eyes from the drying blood on his hands and is struck by a bolt of delayed fear, finally able to register now that the immediate need for action has passed. Hank was on that patrol, and Hank carried Graves back from the other side of the river. Hank could have been the one injured. Hank could be the one dead.

The fans in his chest cavity speed up, a simulation of increased respiration in humans. It’s a redundant reaction, but he was designed to be as lifelike as possible. 

When Garcia had grabbed his arm and pulled him out of his billeted quarters and down the stairs towards the basement his words bled into each other, Connor’s sensors registering high levels of stress. All Connor was able to decipher from the monologue before his own stress response kicked in was Hank’s name and that there had been some kind of incident involving a grenade that didn’t look good. His thirium pump stalled for a beat or two as he ran after Garcia, expecting the worst. 

Connor hadn’t been entirely happy that Hank had volunteered to go on the mission to snatch a few prisoners for interrogation. They only just made it through the woods alive and mostly intact, and then Hank is putting himself forward for a patrol in enemy territory when the rest of the company is sleeping safe in actual beds for the first time in months. Rationally, he knows Hank places the need to lead his men above his own safety and that that is an admirable, even required, quality in a Sergeant, but his rationality is no longer what is once was. 

There had been a split second when he’d made it into the basement behind Garcia and caught sight of Hank standing there, covered in blood and surrounded by chaos, where Connor had frozen. He stood, staring, until he registered the pained moans coming from the floor and he knew that Hank was ok. After that, he had no more time to consider anything else but how to save Graves.

It hits him again, a tide of emotion crashing over him like a tsunami, no more barriers there to hold it back. It hits him, sat on Hank’s bunk with the man himself at his feet, that Hank made it back. He pulls Hank up to sit on the mattress, hands frantic as they fly over his body looking for any kind of injury or damage that requires attention.

Hank sits quietly, moving where Connor puts him and staying there for as long as he needs, his fingertips skating over smooth silver and angry red scars from shrapnel and bullets, barbed wire and glass. Connor only calms when he finishes his examination, finding only superficial burns from the grenade where Connor assumes he charged in after Graves. He’ll need to treat them, but they can wait until the motors in his hands have stopped shaking.

He slumps forwards into Hank, hands gripped in his jacket in a sick mirror image of earlier. His CPU is buzzing with information about adrenaline and energy crashes, how to stave off combat fatigue. It’s nothing that he himself can experience, but the sudden unexplainable increase in the gravity acting on his body seems to be a close approximation.

Hank’s hands cover his to pull them away and he pushes Connor to sit up again. He leaves a large hand against his shoulder, like he doesn’t think Connor will stay upright if he lets go. Probably an accurate assessment. Connor’s eyes hover somewhere around the filthy scarf wrapped around Hank’s neck and tucked into his drabs. He wants to look at Hank’s face, to see him smile, or frown, or laugh. To see him alive. But he hesitates.

“I’m a deviant, Hank.” He says it to the scarf, eyes so focussed he can see the weave of the material. He follows the strands of it, sees flecks of metal and gunpowder clinging to them.

“I know, Connor.” 

Connor looks up then, surprised. He hadn’t run any kind of precognition as to what would happen if Connor confessed to him, hadn’t planned it at all, really, intending to ignore it as long as he possibly could. Hank’s face is sombre, but open; he’s not bullshitting Connor with platitudes or pretending the whole situation isn’t as fucked up as it is. Hank always shoots straight, with his rifle and with his words. Connor depends on it.

“I’m…” he feels his face crumple, instability and uncertainty inhibiting him, unable to match words with the mess of emotion inside of him, “... scared.” He looks away again.

“We’re all scared, Connor. Hell, i’m fuckin’ terrified.” Hank’s voice is gruff, harder than stone. The concept of Hank feeling fear doesn’t compute.

“Any one of them sons of bitches out there says he ain’t scared is a fuckin’ bald-faced liar. We all just wanna make it through this thing alive, mostly intact.” He smiles a little, though there’s not much humour in it.

“A Captain once told me the only way not to feel fear is to accept that you’re already dead, that that’s the only way you can do your job. But I say that’s bullshit.”

Connor frowns again, watching as Hank leans in to make his point.

“The only way you can get through this is to take it one second at a time, one step at a time, a bullet at a time. Our clocks are all tickin’, same as always. We die when we die, but it don’t mean we have to live like we’re already dead.” 

Hank leans in further and Connor’s eyes close.

“Just means none of us got time to waste.” Hank is so close that he can feel Hank’s breath ghosting over his skin as he forms the words.

He feels pressure against his cheek, on the corner of his mouth and he takes a few seconds to register the input. Hank’s lips, a kiss.

Connor lets out a small, involuntary noise and turns to look at Hank, eyes cast down towards his lips. Hank doesn’t pull away, but allows Connor the precious time he needs to process. His systems are lagging terribly, but he gets there eventually.

He leans forward and closes the distance between them, Hank’s lips chapped and dry, but a burst of warmth in the frigid cold of the winter air.

Hank’s hand comes up to cup his jaw, so gentle that Connor almost doesn’t feel it until he presses forward, needing to be closer. He feels his processors idle, one by one, and revels in the silence, allowing himself to feel Hank and only Hank.

The second Hank moves his head slightly, lips slotting into Connor’s own, tentative pressure giving way to a sense of surety, Connor surges forward. He’s no longer content with merely sitting beside him, he feels a primal need to be as close as he physically can be to Hank, and even that is not close enough. Hank meets him with equal fervour, pressing their chests together with enough force that Connor thinks he can feel the hard outline of Hank’s dog tags from under his fatigues against his sternum.

Hank wraps an arm around Connor’s waist and heaves them up onto the bed so that he can lie Connor down and crawl on top of him, somehow managing never to break the kiss for even a second. 

He buries his hands into Hank’s hair, growing out beyond the regulation length after so long spent in the Belgian forests, to keep him where he wants him.

Connor’s chest heaves, even though he has no need of oxygen, his systems in no danger of overheating in a draughty house no warmer than it is outside. Every time his chest expands he feels the weight of Hank on top of him, pinning him to the bed, grounding him in the here and now. He craves the press of Hank’s body against him, arching up into him to feel it more.

It’s heady; Connor doesn’t know what’s happening, and he doesn’t care either. He’s not planning three steps ahead in his mind, not running any scenarios for success probability, or attempting to analyse anything to expand his internal database. All he knows is that he’s lying next to Hank, pressed together head to toe, and finally feeling like he might not become lost in his own fear after all.

He’s never kissed anyone since his activation, he’s never felt the urge to, or truly understood the concept of it. Until now. He’s never felt so alive than in this moment, with Hank’s hands slipping under his jacket to run over his synth skin, the sensors on his face singing with the scratch of Hank’s beard, his own hands gripping at Hank’s biceps holding him above Connor and feeling the power of them. 

He finally understands.


End file.
